Member's Off-site Blogs

INTELLIGENCE COCK UPS?

“The use of double agents in time of war is a time-honoured method both of deception and of counterespionage. They have been used frequently and extensively in most wars and in many places: they will quite certainly be used again. Every spy who is sent into enemy territory or across the line must be alive to the possibility of capture and, in the event of capture, of saving his life not merely by full confession but by returning with message couched in a form approved and perhaps dictated by his captors.

An outstanding intelligence job on the Bali Nine handed over for a bit of hard-core justice. Are the Feds really sure none of them is related to a Coalition politician, or from a wealthy Catholic family? C'mon, at least one of them must be under George Pell's provenance. Will he plead to Lord Downer for all their souls?

If there is no blowback from this coup, doesn't it suggest pre-emption is already working well?

INTELLIGENCE COCK UPS?By Gus LeoniskyCreated 18 Apr 2005 - 12:54pm"The use of double agents in time of war is a time-honoured method both of deception and of counterespionage. They have been used frequently and extensively in most wars and in many places: they will quite certainly be used again. Every spy who is sent into enemy territory or across the line must be alive to the possibility of capture and, in the event of capture, of saving his life not merely by full confession but by returning with message couched in a form approved and perhaps dictated by his captors.""The high-souled fanatic may repudiate even the suggestion that he would be capable of giving way to pressure and of acting as a double-agent, but the majority of spies are not of this Spartan breed, and many, perhaps a majority, of them are ready and even willing to commit treachery ..."J. C. Masterman Chair of the Double-Cross Committee War Office (England) (Debriefer and handler of Double-Cross agents)"The real home of successful deception was the Middle East." J. C. Masterman ...

"At the request of the CIA, at a time when there was still exchange of information between Paris and Washington in this domain, LeRoy was one of the pioneer of Western espionage in the USSR. What the Americans could not do then, before U2 and spy satellites, this stubborn Frenchman did it. He convinced some pilots of the French airline travelling from Paris to Moscow and back to carry on board their aircraft some highly sophisticated photographic equipment. Some of these planes, often swayed away from the allocated narrow air corridor. LeRoy thus gathered the first photographs of the launch pads of the Soviet nuclear missiles..."Philippe Bernert Service 7 SDECE LeRoy-Finville [book extract translated by Gus]

The large format cameras were very well hidden and even when the Soviets inspected planes on suspicion of spying, they never found anything... The film stock was supplied by the US and could only be processed by a special Kodak lab back there until the French were able to reinvent the processing and they discovered the Americans were cheating big time on the sharing deal. The French were only getting back half of the pictures, the less interesting ones. The French told the Yanks to bugger off and the US had to use U2s to spy on the USSR... No bulshit here...]

"MI5 and MI6 had high hopes for war-shortening information from Lecube. They believe they had verified beyond doubt that he was a spy. They only needed to make him talk. But after a week, Milmo wrote "No progress has been made ... it looks as though he is going to be an extremely obstinate nut to crack.? Soon afterwards, Milmo wrote to Philby, seeking approval to apply special measures to the interrogation of the detainee..."The Guardian "Nobody is Talking? Feb 18 2005 (article on torture) (At the time Philby was a high-ranking Officer in Britain's Secret Service and a double-agent for the Russians...)

WHO TO TRUST?Well, in regard to the sorry saga - the reasons put forward to go to war in Iraq - no worries, no contest... We were bullshitted first class by government propaganda, media laziness and greed, and some of us not only knew that, but also had the information in hand... But, like on many occasion of dissent or whistle-blowing, who wants to listen in, against the tide of orchestrated hysteria.... Do you expect that extremely experienced experts in the field of information gathering (spying) on a piddly country (Iraq) would get it so wrong? Do you expect that media is not influenced by political currents? In the mid 1800's A famous novelist wrote something to the effect that newspapers (media) fed on the carcasses of the dead... Not too far off the mark as you saw how most of the media, especially some unashamedly unscrupulous conglomerate jumped on the band-wagon. A war? Goody goody! That will sell papers by the forest load. More secret commercial favours ALSO demanded tactical support for the war. From the sorry David Kelly affair to small media outlet being given scoops on defectors by "commercial branches" of the CIA, from the blunders made in speeches by Blair and Bush to even the semi-diplomatic rejection of the WMDs concept by "Old Europe", it would take several tomes of an encyclopedia to precisely enumerates and detail all the tricks and turns from the governments of Australia, Britain and the US... So I will use a broad brush with few examples.... Say, the more enquiries about the "intelligence failures", the more the Administrations in the US and in England are trying to take us for a bunch of fools. In Australia, Andrew Wilkie was the only honourable person who in his position in the Secret Services could see that the information supplied about Saddam's WMDs was not reliable at best and erroneous on average. He wrote a book about it...

INFORMANTSMost of the information for the reason to go to war came from "defectors" who had a vested interest in bagging Saddam as much as they could... And not only that, it was basically the only info there was. And the lot was hearsay! No proof! No first hand info! This was BREAKING ALL THE RULES of spying... Even basic rules of first year elementary spy school... But, due to pressure from the US administration, the RULES HAD TO BE BROKEN TO "PROVE" the case for war against Saddam... AS "president" G. W. Bush said in his speech on the first anniversary of 9-11: "We will PROVE Saddam's guilt!!!" to a resounding applause... People believed Saddam had something to do with 9-11, much of the media was going with that too, while all the hard evidence pointed somewhere else... Professional spies and specialists-assessors of information don't drop their pants by accident, nor, because the weather had turned foggy, do they lose their ability to see clearly on such issues. No, the CIA was "buying" most of its information from Ahmed Chalabi's network of defectors. Chalabi was paid US $350,000 per month, by the CIA, for his efforts... In fact his "defectors" were coached and briefed by a very secret and small subsection of the CIA... (He was then disgraced a year after the invasion but there's a couple of conflicting theory about that...)

TECHNOLOGYOn the other hand, information technology is the fastest growing smart industry in the world. From satellite phones to satellite imaging, from the Internet to Television networks, the technology is mind-boggling. Communication is one of the major characteristics of the human species that has enabled it to define and refine its evolution. But all the sophisticated technology in the world does not control the quality nor the accuracy of the information which can insofar be manipulated to achieve desired outcomes contrary to reality at large. With all the US technology, the only pictures that Colin Powell could come up with, were that of clapped out trucks with flapping canvases, in 40 plus degree desert heat, to "PROVE" that Saddam was cooking biological weapons... Ahem... In fact it is a farce to even contemplate or say "intelligence failures" on this scale.

With 176 official spy satellites, 88 communication satellites from a private network also used by the Defence Department, drones, FOURTEEN major intelligence agencies - themselves with countless departments of gathering and analysis - five major Armed Forces and five major chains of directorships - usually bright, leadership personnel..., please do not tell me that the US got misled about the existence of WMD in Iraq mostly single-handedly by an alleged convicted criminal, Mr Chalabi? And a couple of fuzzy snapshots? No, the whole lot was a gigantic lie, manufactured by the administration to enforce a political outcome.

WAR STRATEGYFurthermore, no-one-and I include the media-in the US, UK nor Australia, did proper analysis of the "war strategy" of attacking a country supposedly riddled with secret WMDs that could be deployed within 45 minutes and reach as far as Cyprus...

Obviously the US commanders KNEW there was no such weapons in Iraq, otherwise they would have had to tell "President Bonsai": "Sorry sir, but we have to negotiate...". A victory against Saddam in these circumstances, would have cost at least 50,000 personnel in the first two weeks of the conflict - a devastating unthinkable outcome. In this aspect of fluidity and massive increase of information and its analysis, there are many opportunity to fiddle and hide the truth.

Even during the Napoleonic wars, and also World War Two, accurate information was as important as the fodder on the fields, in order to decimate the other side. Generals do know that. Either Saddam HAS WMDs and we can't attack OR he has not and the coast is clear... The US KNEW : the coast was clear.... "Through only a cannonade and not a battle, Valmy was a turning point in the History of Europe. The Duke of Brunswick, invading revolutionary France, turned back - "he did not know what was on the other side of the hill." "There is the classic example of the failure of military Intelligence - the failure to know ... The function of an Intelligence Service is "to know" - to know what are the intentions of an enemy, to know his plans and resources, the disposition of his troops and their morale." J. C. Masterman.

IF the description of Saddam's weaponry by the Pentagon and the daily rags was accurate then there was NO WAY the US would have attacked Iraq the way they did... Struth! The first salvo landed on a restaurant, killing dinners and staff, in uptown Baghdad where Saddam was supposedly having dinner with big oils of his government... Another piece of poor double-cross from an informant who gave the false information just to be interesting and collect ten pieces of silver.

ANALYSISStatistics in sport now plays a major role in redefining tactics and medical info in beefing up the athletes, and so does intimate knowledge of one's opponent, to the point of making courage and gun-ho values presently relegated to the war action movie and medal ceremonies. Amphetamines? sure... Intelligence gathering has many dynamics and allegiances that can lead to major conflict of interest. One of the problem the European Community faces at the present is the complex relationship with the UK. The UK get its intelligence mostly from their own services and share much of it with the US which shares its own with the UK in return, in many fields. For example, the US/UK secret service alliance processes a staggering 130 trillion items of information per month from its satellite network (including through facilities at Pine Gap). Most of this is not shared with the European Community that has its own network of spy satellites on a much smaller scale. In fact one should read here France, Germany, Italy and Spain who have provided the French with the cash to develop the network. It processes a pitiful 2 to 3 million items per month. Their photographic resolution can only define one metre sized-objects, although they have launched a more sophisticated system with definition to about 20 cm. All in all, a ridiculously small exercise compared to the mammoth gathering by the US/UK. But then there is the X factor: Quality of the information. And then there is the Y factor: Quality of Analysis And then there is the Z factor: What you do with it. Most of the US/UK incoming data is useless. So much so that they would have a tendency to be lost, swimming in a tempest of information overload and miss the vital bits. The French (read the "other Europeans") due to limited resources are a lot more precise in the targeting of the collection. One of the sore point with the US administration on this is the French "friendly? style of spying upon US enterprises in the world - information diligently passed onto the CEO of major French and German companies. The US are doing the same, tit for tat... Of course these days one has secret codes but these complexities can be broken by computer time and smart analysis. On the subject of WMDs in Iraq, the French knew through their own services that the US/UK were propagating big big lies (mensonges, tromperies, etc were the word they used). When Colin Powell was seriously showing his pictures of Iraqi trucks at the UN, the French and the Germans were laughing their heads off, backstage.. To some extent these were the ONLY PICTURES Colin Powell could show... One can argue, the graphic department of the CIA (all secret service agencies have graphic departments in order to manufacture fake documents and also indulge in opening diplomatic mail without leaving trace)... the graphic department of the CIA could have knocked up a few fake pix of rockets in the desert sand and bob was your uncle... Except the "Europeans? would have known they were fake because they, themselves, scan the blue skies above and the only thing they could not dispute overtly was that the trucks were trucks!!! Sure they could say... we've got pictures of them too but that DOES NOT PROVE anything... The diplomacy that ensued was difficult. I would venture to say on the subject of spying on the ground, the US have been lazy. The French, the Germans and the English are more efficient at gathering good stuff than the Yanks.

TESTING... TESTING...Regarding the affair with Mr Chalabi having allegedly spilled the beans on the US having broken the Iranian secret codes, I would not be surprised if in fact Mr Chalabi did not tell the Iranians anything but they played the usual trick of testing out what the Americans knew... Send a cable from an operative after having met Mr Chalabi, re Mr Chalabi having said such and such, and the CIA storm that swamped MR Chalabi told the Iranians straight away the US knew their codes.... Childish really... The CIA got tricked big time...

RESOLUTION 1441WE should be made aware once more that Saddam Hussein did comply with the UN resolution 1441 contrary to the constant blurts of our Mr Downer. Three months before the invasion, Saddam provided a very accurate 10,000-plus pages comprehensive report on his weapons of mass destruction, of their suppliers and their disposal thereof apart from very few missing details, mostly because things had not been recorded,.Of course, the report was dismissed as baloney by the US administration, who also high-jacked it, crossed out a lot of embarrassing bits and released it back to the UN. It was only on a very few small technical details that the inspectors reported breaches-such as Saddam's rockets allowed (under UN sanctions) to reach 150 kms sometimes could have reached 156 kms downwind... These were destroyed.

PROOFS...So we know the CIA-MI6 manufactured the proofs but... "An American Senate report will blame the CIA for the Bush administration's unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and will not address White House responsibility for the debacle." Okay... It's basically impossible to show proofs about the white house having demanded deliberately slanted "proof" on Iraq WMDs, but it's basically impossible for the CIA to goof so badly without a nudge from the White house,,, via secret channels of course.... Proper analysis of the enormity of the "INTELLIGENCE FAILURES" can only indicate the White House (and Whitehall and Little Johnny) was involved in the creation of the porkies. That the CIA makes a few blunders, that's very careless... that MI6 makes the same blunders, that's collusion. That ASIO makes the same... that's blind stupidity. Making blunders of such huge magnitude, that's deliberate governmental policy. The French and the Germans had the same sources of information and were far more cautious with it because their own operatives in the field knew the information did not stack up. ONLY ONE PERSON ALERTED THE PUBLIC THAT ALL THE RULES OF PROPER INTELLIGENCE GATHERING WERE BEING BROKEN. ONLY ONE PERSON WAS HONEST ENOUGH TO LET US KNOW WE WERE BEING FED A GIGANTIC LIE... A brave Australian analyst, a dedicated professional army officer, who should get a medal for not only having destroyed his own career, but for putting his own life at risk. Andrew Wilkie of course has been vilified and belittled by the Howard Government. Even someone like Andrew Wilkie has not had many means of being heard on the subject of our government lies. He is clamped in by the "treason factor" and the secrecy act. Dr David Kelly did speak out in England too. He gave a lead off the record to a journo who used his information full on, without sourcing somewhere else... The information was correct but denied to be so... David Kelly was thus hounded by the British government... He died. More could be said here of the enquiries about his death and the obvious discrepancies in the reports. The Hutton report did not have access to critical information which was proven tempered with in a later enquiry...

IRAN"We can't prove Iran-9/11 link: CIA AFP - About eight hijackers passed through Iran before the September 11 attacks on the United States, but Washington has no evidence that Tehran sanctioned the strikes, the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency said." A military intelligence memo circulating in July 1942... "We must keep a realistic outlook and not become fascinated by the project as though it were a game..." A deadly game for too many...

Good questions from Bob Ellis... Mind you despite our idiotic PM jumping up and down and making grandstanding allegations about anything, including who shot down MH17, we still have not been told the full story on who shot whom in the Martin Place siege. And Tony Abbott made unverified claims without proper checks about the "killer" having a gun licence when he did not. The AFP took the fall on this one, blaming some form of cross-check clerical error, but then we have no clue if this is a way to "exonerate" Tony's slip up... More to come, I believe.